Wigan manager Paul Jewell played down his side's recent slump following this hammering of local rivals Preston.

Wigan are now a point clear of Ipswich at the top of the Coca-Cola Championship after their first win in five matches.

The swagger that has been absent in recent weeks returned to the Wigan side and Jason Roberts and Nathan Ellington ended respective eight and five-match goal droughts.

But Jewell defended his side's recent record and said: "I think more has been made of the bad spell than there has actually been because we got off to such a fantastic start.

"We hadn't won in four games but we were unbeaten in two and after 22 games we've got 44 points and two points a game is championship form."

Lee McCulloch opened the scoring midway through the first half before an Alan Mahon goal, a double from Ellington and a Roberts penalty completed a second-half romp and sealed the Latics' biggest win of the season.

However, Jewell felt that after Mahon's goal he saw the belief return to his side and he added: "After we got the second goal we showed that we can play.

"Once we scored the second you could see the confidence flow through the players.

"It's an amazing thing confidence. No-one knows why we looked a different team second half than we did first-half and we could have won by more."

Preston's Chris Lucketti would have levelled the scores just before half-time but had his header harshly ruled out for leaning on Matt Jackson following a Graham Alexander corner.

The former West Brom man was the provider again, holding off Lucketti before a neat cross to Ellington at the far post to make it three.

Ellington added another with a shot from distance which deflected off Claude Davis before Roberts was bundled over by Marlon Broomes in the area and sent Gould the wrong way with the resulting spot-kick.

Dickson Etuhu missed a free-header just after half-time before Preston buckled under the Latics' onslaught and went down to their worst defeat in three-and-a-half years.

Preston boss Billy Davies said: "You can talk about the turning point of the Chris Lucketti goal which I believe was quite soft.

"That's a big turning point. From the comments that I've had, it could have stood.

"Then in the second half Dickson Etuhu had a great chance to get us back in the game but then we left them one on one at the back and they scored the second.

"I think we came off the best performance of the season last week against Derby and went into the worst, in the second half, since I took over."